Sneaky Scavs
Welcome to the next installment in our lore series. Today we’re going to look at the second-to-last faction type, the scavengers. Much like the raiders, these guys aren’t so much one single, unified faction as a mess of lone survivors and loose bands.
Scavengers are people who stayed behind in the city centers throughout the conflict, either because they missed the evacuation, decided to take their chances or got caught up in the chaos and never got a good chance to leave in the first place.
They make a living by looting the city ruins for any valuables that can no longer be produced: medicine, electronics, power tools, weapons and ammo, etc. Of course, all the easy looting spots have been picked clean a long time ago and so they have to venture into ever more dangerous locations, deep within the ruins, sneaking past patrolling mechanoids and raider bands to find that unclaimed pharmacy or police armory. Players out on their own raids might run across such roaming bands of scavengers. They might be willing to trade their scrap at favorable prices to lighten their packs, or they might lay claim to this latest trove and not take kindly to anyone else trying to take it from them.
Accordingly, their equipment is a menagerie of pre-collapse clothing, shoddily patched up with rags, with weapons and armor fashioned from scrap or scavenged from police armories or home owners who never got the chance to use them.
With the downtown areas overrun by mechs, they usually set up ragged camps around the edges of their city. There they live in bombed out buildings, patched up with scrap and tarps to keep the weather out while they sleep on old mattresses. This is also where they bring back and store their loot to trade with visiting caravans. Since they can’t grow crops on concrete, scavenger communities rely on outlying settlements to supply them with fresh food in exchange for medical supplies and tech. The exchange rate of batteries to potatoes is a hotly debated topic on these market places and players who find themselves with a surplus of food might choose to partake in the exchange. Or they might opt to simply take their entire stockpile by force, so long as they don’t mind upsetting the neighbors.
Some scavengers opt for a more nomadic existence, traveling the countryside alone or in small groups, trudging through remote government facilities, abandoned military outposts and other locations of interest that lie outside the urban areas. Instead of scavenger camps, they will make stops at nearby settlements, trading scrap for food and lodgings. To the player they can provide an easy, if unreliable source of income and if they enjoy their stay they might be inclined to make a return visit or even join the settlement permanently.